Inca XL-80

Like other technologies, it’s taken for granted. But, modern printing is a miracle of engineering precision, where producing a beautiful print is almost as complex as building a beautiful car. Thanks to Renishaw position encoders and laser measurement technology, one company’s large-scale printers are considered the safe bet for consistency, reliability and stunning images.

William Caxton could never have imagined it. More than 500 years after England’s printing pioneer produced the country’s first books, we live in a world obsessed with the printed image, where product packaging, billboards, shop window displays, bus shelters and almost every available product and public space is taken up with a high-resolution visual image or photograph. Such is our insatiable appetite for fresh visual stimulation that the people and the companies who produce these images need printers that are built both for speed and, if they want to stop us in our tracks, for high-quality.

Large, rapid, high-quality printers 

Inca Digital Printers Ltd develops and manufactures digital flatbed inkjet printers aimed at companies wanting to respond efficiently to market needs for short-run prints, particularly high-quality, full-colour images produced on a variety of rigid or flexible substrates. “Today’s printing companies want a combination of speed, quality and repeatability,” says Inca’s Director of Technology, Dr. Will Eve. “They also want print at large sizes, which makes the other three more difficult to attain. To help us achieve all four, we use Renishaw position encoders and check all of our printers with a Renishaw XL-80 laser.” Building on the success of the ML10 laser system, the new compact XL-80 has greatly improved dynamic measurement performance, including a maximum linear measurement speed of 4 m/s.

Calibrating to check alignment

“We use the XL-80 for both static and dynamic measurements,” says Dr. Eve. “When we’re building our machines, we take measurements along the length of the main rails – some of them up to 11.5 m – to make sure the chassis is aligned when it arrives from the fabricator. Then, when the machine is built, powered up and tested, we use the Renishaw XL-80 to measure the accuracy of the moving machine. We couldn’t use our previous ML10 laser at the machine’s full speed because the table moves too quickly. Any positional anomalies we discover are saved in a file in the control system, which uses the values as the basis for its dynamic compensation.” Even the tiniest misalignment in the machine’s chassis can be amplified, which would cause banding and other registration errors to show up in the image.

Portability is critical

Amongst other things, the new XL-80 was conceived with portability in mind. “The fact that the whole system fits into a relatively small case, which one man can carry comfortably, is a great attribute. Especially as, from time to time, we also take the laser on site to recalibrate a customer’s machine,” adds Dr. Eve.

Using encoders for precision and speed

Inca Digital printers can be relied upon for their incredible accuracy and repeatability, thanks in large part to the company’s use of Renishaw’s position encoders, which have an established reputation for being easy to install and set up. “We use Renishaw linear encoders on our Spyder machines to provide a more precise and faster motion platform with zero mechanical error,” says Inca’s Control Team Leader, Wei Chan.

Easy encoder set-up

“Renishaw’s optical encoders are very easy to use thanks to their set-up LEDs,” says Wei Chan. “There’s no need for complex equipment,” he says, “the drive performance and the 1 μm (micrometre) resolution allow very reliable control of the position and velocity servo loop, even at low speeds. There’s also minimum interpolation error because of the short 20 μm signal pitch.” All of which adds up to a beautiful, pin-sharp image, time after time.